Ireland’s European Commissioner Michael McGrath was quoted at the weekend defending the European commitment to more active policing of the big tech companies.

There has been pushback from the US administration, including punitive tariff threats, at what Donald Trump and his colleagues see as a backdoor regulatory assault on a sector dominated by US multinationals.

Trump’s version of America First means deploying tariff policy against foreign companies seen as rivals to the perceived interests of Silicon Valley.

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The Europeans will not back off according to McGrath, since they have an obligation to pursue whatever policies they feel are best suited to European priorities.

The strong influence of Silicon Valley on the US administration is not new.

The Senate and the House of Representatives enacted an important piece of legislation in 1996, when Democrat Bill Clinton was president, which excused the internet platforms from the normal obligations of publishers which apply to newspapers, radio and television stations.

Called the Communications Decency Act, it amended earlier 1930s legislation to provide immunity for online internet platforms from sanctions arising from third-party content generated by their users, in other words by anybody at all, including anonymous and potentially untraceable originators.

Instead the platform companies, in their infancy 30 years ago when the legislation was framed, were expected to engage in ‘good faith’ on the removal or moderation of third-party material considered by the operator “to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected”.

Promoters

The 1996 bill’s promoters argued that big tech (much smaller at the time) should be treated only as distributors, so not liable for the content they distributed.

If you get libelled, you do not sue the newsagent, you sue the newspaper, or a radio or TV station.

You can also sue the author of the libel, possibly not as promising a mark for costs and damages, but big tech authors are protected by anonymity – the internet platforms, especially the popular social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter, now have hundreds of millions of worldwide users and do not even attempt to identify who is authoring the posts.

It’s as if a newspaper could freely publish libellous statements, or even incitements to riot, authored by Mickey Mouse or some other pseudonym.

Had the incitements to riot, posted widely on social media prior to the attacks on gardaí at Saggart in Dublin two weeks ago, appeared instead in the pages of this or any other newspaper, or had been broadcast, the media outlet would have been held responsible and liable to prosecution and sanction by regulators.

The combination of legal immunity and the anonymity and untraceability of originators have played a key role in the commercial success of the big platform companies.

Regularly

A firm called WPP is regularly listed as the world’s largest advertising agency. It used to be. After several profit warnings over the past year the share price is down in a rising market, even though WPP has annual billings of about $20bn.

Google will turn over 20 times that amount, at least $400bn, in 2025, mostly from advertising.

The search engine is free but the sale of user information to advertisers is the core business since ads can be targeted at people with known characteristics including purchase histories and website visits.

The biggest advertising agency in the world is Google, even though they provide no creative input.

The content is largely free to the platforms too, furnished by the originators, including click-seeking content whose publication would get traditional publishers into trouble.

The close involvement of Silicon Valley in financing US political campaigns should be seen in this context.

Newspapers and broadcasters cannot compete with the big tech companies and have suffered on two fronts.

Advertising dollars have migrated away and so have audiences. Only a few US cities still have more than one regular newspaper, several smaller cities have none and in Ireland print circulations have roughly halved since the year 2000.

The result has been an attempt to balance the books through cutting editorial budgets at the risk of losing patronage.

Broadcasters have also been suffering audience attrition courtesy of the streaming services and they fish from the same advertising pond as Google and the other platforms.

RTÉ has suffered further through the decline in revenue from the earmarked tax, the licence fee, which is devoted mainly to its annual subvention. Virgin has sought additional public funding as its advertising revenue weakens.

Public discussion of the burgeoning influence of big tech has been dominated by concerns about privacy and excessive surveillance.

Michael McGrath’s concerns could reasonably be extended to include the commercial erosion of traditional print and broadcast media through European tolerance of the exorbitant privileges conferred, 30 years ago, by the US political system.